Memorial Day - Rebecca del Rio

[Larry Robinson]

Memorial Day

In Afghanistan, we pour water
On the stones to keep memories
Alive. So many stories,
So many stones
An army of children
Are employed, keeping
Vigil from Bibi Jawaher's grave.
Bibi, twenty-seven years dead,
Gives them a home, gathering
Place to watch as mourners
Come to remember.

A mother dreams
Her son dying in suicidal flames
A lost love, temporary agony
Assuaged by permanent solution.
Mother's agony indefinite, daily
She pays the boys to water
The stone.

Here the daily dead
Mingle with War's harvest.
The jeweler's mother
Receives daily ministrations,
Her stone bathed 
As one might bathe a baby,
Delicate, loving touch
From a boy whose attentions
Buys bread for his family.


Bibi's name disappeared, 
Merged into the stone
Is known by fingers
Reading as though by Braille.
Water that remains 
In the boys' buckets
Honors her, gratitude remembers her
If only by name, daily.
If she sinned, surely
The stone's frequent ablution
Has made her a saint.

"Death is easy here,"
The stone mason says.
He used to construct
Fireplaces, sculpt monuments,
Money was easy once.
It flowed from foreign coffers
But like their soldiers,
Little stayed behind.
The mason fortunate and flexible
Lives by carving portraits
Of the dead.

The market thrived, alive
Today the cemetery, home
To more and more 
Is the City's center.
Every day here is
Day of the Dead, Memorial Day
Every day families picnic
Children play.
Every day the Dead live
Lives surrounded by loved ones.

	- Rebecca del Rio






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